Artist's rendering of the Troy Transit Center, which is currently under construction. / City of Troy

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Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

The Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of a developer who says Troy must give back land the developer donated for a transit center because the city failed to get the project funded within the donation’s 10-year deadline.

The agreement by the city to have the center funded within 10 years dates to 2000, setting June 2, 2010, as the deadline, according to the court ruling.

“The next steps are unclear, because the City of Troy built this transit center on a parcel of land it does not own now and has never owned,” Grand/Sakwa Properties spokesman Mort Meisner said Friday.

In the early 2000s, developer Grand/Sakwa Properties developed a 77-acre mixed development of stores and condominiums that surrounds the transit center, at the southwest corner of Maple and Coolidge.

As construction crews worked Friday to complete the half-built regional Troy Transit Center, city officials are pondering whether the ruling means they must pay for the 2.7-acre site.

The ruling comes almost on the eve of the city’s May 7 special election to fill the seat of former Mayor Janice Daniels, who was recalled after she repeatedly tried to block the transit project.

Daniels, recalled as Troy’s mayor in November, said Friday she “felt saddened that our city is being put through so much that I hoped to prevent with my vote against this transit center.”

She added: “I pray that this gets resolved without costing the taxpayers one dime.”

During her tenure as mayor, Daniels argued that the city’s ownership of the land was clouded by the lawsuit, which filed in July 2010.

“We may appeal (the developer’s lawsuit) again, probably, or we might buy the property at fair-market value,” said Troy Mayor Pro Tem Wade Fleming, after hearing of the court’s 3-0 decision.

City officials thought it “was a very slim possibility” that the appeals court would overturn a lower court’s ruling that sided with the city, he said.

“We’re looking forward to opening this up in August or September,” Fleming said.

Initially an opponent of the project, Fleming brokered a cost-cutting compromise that saved millions in federal dollars, then became the swing vote in a contentious 4-3 approval of the center in January 2012.

Although no city money was needed, the center became a rallying point for what Daniels characterized as a wasteful federal grant that no city should accept.

Troy Mayor Dane Slater, elected to the council in November 2009 and appointed mayor after Daniels’ recall, said the court ruling was worrisome. Slater supported the transit center as soon as he was elected.

“I can’t comment directly on the lawsuit, but I will say that we weren’t expecting this at all,” Slater said.

The initial design called for the City of Birmingham to build part of the center on its side of Amtrak rail tracks, but Birmingham pulled out when a landowner on its side requested double the assessed value for its property, city officials said at the time.

The $6-million project is “on schedule and on budget so far,” Slater said Friday.